FTR’s Dax Harwood has claimed that Paul Heyman pretended to be with Vince McMahon when pitching an angle over the phone.
He told the story on the latest edition of FTR with Dax Harwood. He outlined how a pitch was made for the SmackDown talent to appear on Raw after 17 days on the road.
Harwood recalled the incident from 2019, when The Revival had been aligned with Randy Orton (transcription by POST Wrestling’s Andrew Thompson):
Like you said, we had been drafted to SmackDown. They wanted us to go to Raw and we were called by travel, the WWE travel services to tell us that we were needed for Raw and we lost it.
We said, ‘Absolutely not.’ We had been on the road at the time for 17 straight days and like I said, three days home for a month-and-a-half or whatever it was and I think we said, ‘Well what are we doing?’ And they said, ‘Well, right now, the creative is you guys are gonna come in and attack Randy’ which is crazy because travel is telling us this.
‘You guys are gonna attack Randy… And then NXT’s gonna come in and jump you guys and beat you down’ and we said, ‘No. Absolutely not. We’re not coming in to do that’ and they said, ‘Well they’ve got you scheduled. They need you.’
Harwood demanded to talk to Paul Heyman, who was booking SmackDown at the time. He said that Heyman soon called back:
Paul Heyman calls us and he says, ‘Hey guys. I hear there’s some problems with you guys not wanting to come to Raw’ and we said, ‘Absolutely. This is our deal. We haven’t been home for this long. We’re SmackDown guys. We just gotta go to NXT Wednesday. Why do we need to be there?’
‘Well we need to do this. You’re a very vital part of this angle’ and we said, ‘Well what is it?’ ‘Well we’re gonna finally have you break up the deal with Randy. You’re gonna beat him up.’
I said, ‘What’s gonna happen after that?’ which we didn’t wanna do that anyway, ‘And well then, NXT is gonna invade the ring. You guys are gonna get the sh*t kicked out of you by NXT, which is then gonna set up for stuff later’ and I said, ‘Nah, we’re not doing that…I said, ‘We’re expecting to go home. I’m going to see my wife and my daughter and we’re told by travel –’ he said, ‘Hang on one second’ and he had the phone right up to his mouth.
Harwood then said Heyman had an imaginary conversation with Vince McMahon:
Paul thinks he’s this incredible worker as far as — I mean, he’s a great carny. Let’s just put it like that and he says, ‘Hey Vince! Yeah, it’s The Revival. Yup! Uh-huh. They were told by travel. Can you believe that Vince? Yeah, Vince can’t believe that either. He can’t believe you guys were told by travel what your creative was’ and he said, ‘Vince, what do you think? Do you think that was…’
It was such a carny thing to do and so, we said, ‘Paul, we’re absolutely not gonna be there, we can’t do that. I’m gonna go home and see my family’ and he says, ‘Hang on one second. Vince, they said they can’t. They wanna go see their family. Yeah, I think they should too, I think that’s a great idea.
Alright guys, I’m gonna talk to Vince a little bit more, but we think we got you off of that Raw’ and it’s like man, we know you’re not talking to Vince. We know he’s not there, so that’s just some of the stuff we had to deal with at the time which is, whatever.
I don’t fault Paul for that, you know what I mean? I don’t fault him for that. I don’t hold any hard feelings to Paul for that because I think — I feel he was a fan of ours but I think he was also doing what his job entailed him to do. But, also it’s like, man, you can just be straight up with us, you can be honest with us.
